Title: Small Worlds, Infinite Possibilities? How Social Networks Affect Entrepreneurial Team Formation and Search
Authors: Howard E. Aldrich and Phillip H. Kim
Source: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sej.8/abstract

In this article social networks are explored in depth as a useful tool in the creation of entrepreneurial teams. Starting off with the explanation of the simple formation of a team, using first a rational process of member selection based on the skills of individuals and their capabilities to grow and change with the business. The second step is the social psychological model that emphasizes the need for team member to function properly. This leads to three network model structures that are employed by entrepreneurs in order to maneuver for opportunities and resources. These three models are random, small world, and scale free network.

Social networking is considered highly important to either the success or failure of many entrepreneurs. A random network is what is used by many researchers use in order to conduct test of statistical significance and allow for patterns to arise. The structure of these are characterized by an average path between nodes (nascent entrepreneurs) in random graphs is short because of indirect ties and the sense that people's location nor wealth effects their access to others. In a random network everyone has full access and entrepreneurs are able to go about things and succeed as easily as possible.

Small world networks are exactly what they sound like, connections formed in smaller clusters like neighborhoods, friendship circles, or workplaces. These restrict a network because of their smaller nature. There are less people to interact with therefore less connection to make which is what sets this networking apart from random networking. This type of social network creates something called homophily which is the principle that a contract with similar people occurs at a higher rate than among dissimilar people. Since a small world network creates such a close knit community outsiders have a very difficult time getting in which only disrupts more connections from being made.

Scale free networks work off of a power law in the distribution of nodes and their ties. In this type of social network nodes can have a large amount of connections, most of which are higher up more influential connections. These networks are formed by nodes joining together and in a way feeding off of each others networks in order to grow their own. A rather ingenious sort of idea really. These connections are always well thought out and calculated precisely, never randomly. Of the three networks discussed in this paper the scale free network is the least vulnerable to random failures due to such a large and diverse network.

The paper also explains the further importance of social networking in business. They also explain the disadvantages that many people are in if they are not chosen to be in a higher up circle. When you are not properly connected often times your profession can suffer since you have less access to various opportunities.

Anthony’s first interviews.

During our study we will have to interview medical and business staff. We are not going right into the official interviews, first we are doing practice interviews. I have done one practice interview and it had ups and downs. The person I was interviewing was a clear and friendly speaker, so it wasn’t hard getting them to talk, but as the interview progressed problems arose. As a talked to the person and asked them about disruptions in their work place it became clear that they, the person being interviewed, was the source of most of the works place disruptions. This made the interview grow acquired as the person I was talking to began to think that I was an informant getting dirt on them. This made the person less open. This made me realized that when the interview growing narrative makes the person being interview seem like a bad influence in their work place that it would be wise to tell them that their are such things a positive disruptions. I didn’t tell the person about the positive disruptions while interviewing them, but the next day I did and it made them feel better. Also while interviewing the person I couldn’t get much information about the current work, because they hadn’t been working in the organization for lang. This leads me to conclude that if we have a choice between a longer lived team and shorter lived team that we should pick the long lived one.

I’m learning a lot while doing these mock interviews. I plan to do another one later this week.

article about team's adaptation

DeChurch, L. Randall, K & Resick, C. (2011). Building team adaptive capacity: the roles of sensegiving and team composition. Journal of applied psychology. Vol. 96. No. 3 525-540

In this article, DeChurch, Randall and Resick believes that strategy adaption is an important form of adaption for teams, so they launched a research to exam the function of strategy mental model. According to them, strategy mental model is the understanding of strategic priority, trade-offs relations among alternatives and implication of decisions. With strategy mental model, people can strategically evaluate the environment for adjusting their behaviors to perform well, which is also defined as strategy adaption. They find out structured strategy-focused knowledge and communication can help team to deal with disruptions effectively by adapting strategies.  This finding has several critical implications. First, when the team has some members whose value is collectivism, those people are likely to communicate effectively with their teammates. When teams have members who have high-level cognitive ability, they also tend to share the information effectively. Secondly, if leaders get trained properly, they can help the team to deal with disruptions (contingency) by a process called sensengiving that is a process trying to impact the environment towards the goal that the leader holds.   

an article about how moral intensity impact decision making in a business context

The Impact of Moral Intensity on Decision Making in a Business Context

Bernhard F. Frey

Journal of Business Ethics , Vol. 26, No. 3 (Aug., 2000) , pp. 181-195

Published by: Springer

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25074339

In this article, Frey is trying to investigate whether the nature of the issues that will result in moral dilemma can impact ethical decision-making processes. He initially proposes that each issue has its own Moral intensity (MI) that consists of six components can effect people’s ethical decision-making processes. These six components are

 “the magnitude or seriousness of potential consequences (MC), the degree to which other people are perceived to agree that an action is ethically questionable (SC), the probability of a decision actually resulting in the negative outcome (LE), the period of time between the decision and the effect (TI), the number of affected people for an effect of constant size (CE), and physical, psychological, or social distance between the decision maker and the people who are likely to be affected by the decision (PR)” (Fray, 2000, 182).

For data collection, he designs two original scenarios in which those six components can be independent manipulated. He manipulates those six components such that he gets 63 scenarios that have all the possible combinations of components. Then, he sends those combinations to 1890 business managers and owners who are randomly picked in New Zealand Business Who’s Who. Finally, he utilizes LE as the benchmark to evaluate the importance of those components. Compare to the LE, he finds out that MC and SC are the most important components and TI, CE and PR are lesser important components that can affect people’s ethical decision-making processes

Title: Social Costs of Energy Disruptions
Authors: Valeria Costantini and Francesco Gracceva
URL: http://www.feem.it/userfiles/attach/Publication/NDL2004/NDL2004-116.pdf

Oil shortages do not just impact the economy, social impacts of oil distribution disruptions can also be very severe. This article is aimed at examining the social costs of oil supply disruptions in order to better understand how people can deal with such a crisis. The article pulls on past oil crisis that lead to drastically increased inflation, trade imbalances, high unemployment, and weak business.

Generally speaking oil supply disruptions have been the result of political or military upheavals, particularly in the Middle East. These have resulted in a transfer of trade power and income from the importers to the exporters. These are known as oil shocks that categorize into notable price change, quantity, and technology change.

There is a direct correlation between crude oil prices and the high unemployed rates in a given country. Depending on the systems that the government has in place a sudden oil shock could mean that lower-income households suffer the bulk of the negative social impacts. Whereas those who are more middle class are not as effected. Since oil demand is so inelastic, when there is a big oil shock such as the one in 1978 a country's entire GDP can be dropped down significantly.

In order to avoid these higher costs people begin carpooling much more. Also another solution that is becoming more common is when looking for a new car, buy something with good gas mileage. Public transportation should also be utilized more frequently when there is a large increase in oil prices. These things will all help to lessen in the social impacts felt whenever there is a disruption in the oil supply that causes a spike in prices.

The legacy of articles.

It is essential for a researcher to read articles related to their subject. Article reading helps inform and inspire the researcher. Most peered reviewed articles help, from recent ones to older ones. Recently published articles are very useful for finding current pieces of data and new ideas that can help research. On the other side of the spectrum older articles deepen the researchers understanding of their growing subject.  For the past week I have been reading these older articles.

This older articles age make their data slightly out of date and devoid of the most current theories, but reading them has its uses. While read these articles I witnessed the creation of ideas that at the time of publication were new, but now are basic theories. Watching the creation of these ideas helped me understand our subject on an all-new level. To use metaphor, its like knowing how to tell time on a watch compared to understanding how the watches gears lace together. I’ll give a example from one of the articles I read.

The last article I read was ‘Error in Medicine’ by Lucian L. Leape MD. This piece of work was published in 1994 on J.A.M.A. The article explores ideas about sources of medicinal disruption, primarily the mentality held in the medical field. This mentality is a sense of responsibility and fear exposing failure. This mentality makes it hard for medical staff to expose their failure so they can be helped improved by others, thus disruption continue. This idea is now basic in the subject we are studying and rally fully explained in recent articles. Reading an article that fully explains the idea in its most fundamental form helps me deepen my understanding of this subject.